Landmark Fairfield Farm gear - and a piece of area history -on the auction block

SALISBURY — Farming has been in Jack and Jeanne Blums’ blood for decades. So have a lot of other things, such as public service, philanthropy and the law. But after last Saturday, the farming part is gone for good.

That’s because the Blums hired auctioneer Phil Jacquier to come in and sell off most of the remaining farm equipment on their landmark Route 41 farm, which is at the Sharon-Salisbury border. That would include such items as tractors, trucks, bale feeders, saws, compressors — even something called a calf puller.

After selling their herd of black Angus cows in a private transaction last November, the Blums knew they would also have to part with the gadgets that sustained the operation. Still, it was with some reluctance that they sold off the equipment, because as Jeanne noted, "It’s all symbolic of the herd."

The Blums have lived in the Northwest Corner fulltime since 1977, when they bought the sprawling farm on Route 41 from the Blagden sisters. In the early 1970s, Jack had been asked to serve as alumni trustee of his high school alma mater, the nearby Hotchkiss School, from which he graduated in 1947. His sister, Lakeville attorney Alice Yoakum, was already living and working up here.

The Blums ran the property for the next 29 years as a black Angus beef cattle breeding ground called Fairfield Farms.

Six years earlier, Jeanne had inherited a black Angus farm in southwestern Virginia. For awhile they actually maintained two farms, while John worked as an attorney in Millerton after leaving his practice at a small Manhattan firm.

"We used to say it cost us a cow every time we flew down to Virginia," Jack quipped.

Fairfield Farms has a long and storied history, one that Jack has pieced together as best he could. In the 18th century it was called Tory Hill Farm and was part of a large land grant — some 7,000 acres — given by King George to Capt. James Landon. During the American Revolution, it was transferred to the Bissell family, which married into the Hotchkiss family, the same one that in 1891 founded the private secondary school that bears its name.

The main farmhouse (the one with the stately columns overlooking Mudge Pond and the Twin Oaks field) was built around 1905 by Albert B. Landon, who lived there until his death in 1933. Clarence Seymour of Norwalk bought it and ran it as a farm until the 1960s, when Dan Lufkin purchased it for his wife, Elise Blagden Lufkin, and her four sisters.

In 1988, 11 years after buying the farm, the Blums sold the development rights to the state for $858,000 as part of a land preservation program developed by the state Department of Agriculture. Jack later would become commissioner of that department in the early 1990s during the administration of Gov. Lowell Weicker.

In 2004, the Blums sold 256 acres to The Hotchkiss School for $2 million, retaining 16 acres with two houses and leasing back the farm buildings. And in February, the Blums sold 53 acres across Route 41 for $1.2 million to The Salisbury Association Land Trust, which will protect yet more of the land from development.

Meanwhile, Jack’s father, Robert E. Blum, who died in 1999 at age 100, had moved to Salisbury in 1970 to retire. In addition to becoming a trustee of Sharon Hospital and a director of the Salisbury Association and Salisbury Village Improvement Society, the elder Blum also was the founder of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, one of the area’s premier philanthropic organizations.

As for what comes next, Jack says, "The future is kind of up in the air. We talk about downsizing but it’s a tough place to leave."

Jack just finished a term on the Connecticut Farmland Trust and has served at various times on the board of Salisbury Bank & Trust and on the vestry at St. John’s Episcopal Church. Jeanne has served on the board of trustees at Sharon Hospital and The Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook. They have seven children and 20 grandchildren, one of whom, 3-year-old Annie Pollard, lives on the west coast of Florida, where the Blums will continue to winter.

"You know what they say about retirement?" Jack asked rhetorically. "You wake up in the morning with nothing to do and by nighttime it’s half done."